Weird anatomical mashups (includes video)

Artist Brian Andrews has created some animation called “Hominid.” With his work he has combined skeletons of humans, animals, arachnids and insects. It makes for some intriguing, if disconcerting, images.

Brian Andrews has created a series of art works, captured by animation, which he has called “Hominid". This is a tale of predator and prey inspired by x-ray films of human and animal skeletons.

Here is the video of his work:

For this project, Andrews canvassed hospitals and veterinary offices for extraneous x-ray films. Having compiled an extensive collection of human and animal images, Andrews then chose which animals to combine with humans to create his 'mashuped' images.

“I’ve always been interested in the boundaries between human and animal, especially apes and primates, which are challenging to our ideas of being human and separate,” says Andrews, who was working on photographs of taxidermied animals when the idea to “provoke the line. I decided to use artistic license and story telling to literally combine our bodies with animal bodies.”

A two-headed hominid by Brian Andrews

Brian Andrews

Commenting on the work, Robert Streiffer, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said: "Andrews’ work is as fantastical as it is topical. Bioethicists still struggle with the morality of animal-human hybrids as researchers continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Even some people who support human embryo research may feel uncomfortable with the notion of genetically engineering chimeras and hybrid animals."